A BT advertising campaign boasting "unbeatable" broadband speeds has been banned for being misleading.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) pulled the BT press, TV and internet ads after it decided it was making misleading and unsubstantiated claims about the speed of the Infinity broadband service.

The ad professed "three times faster fibre optic broadband" and "four times faster broadband" for activities including uploading photos and videos to Facebook, downloading albums and streaming HD movies.

The ASA concluded it had not seen evidence that BT's download speeds were unbeatable, and it concluded that the claims in the ads had not been substantiated.

The decision came after Virgin Media and three other complainants challenged whether the "unbeatable" claims and promises of faster broadband could be backed up.

BT defended itself by referring to a May 2011 Ofcom report which showed Infinity had an average download speed of 33.8 Mbps and an average upload speed of 8.8 Mbps, compared with lower national averages.

BT said it had been mindful not to say that Infinity was three times faster for uploading, downloading or streaming.

The telecoms giant indicated that Virgin seemed to think that its ads were claiming that Infinity was three times faster for all the activities listed in its commercials, but it did not believe consumers would interpret them in the same way.

The advertising campaign in question was launched in August and September of last year.